Architected enterprise-scale authentication and authorization systems.
Led GraphQL platform and orchestration initiatives integrating mobile and vendor systems.
Delivered cost-saving platform migrations saving as much as ~$500K per deployment.
Built data-rich visualization platforms across healthcare, weather, energy, and commerce domains.
Served as an adjunct professor (Creative Circus / Thinkful) and JS Atlanta speaker, educating developers on full-stack patterns and the implementation of emerging technologies.
Technical editor of “Data Visualization with JavaScript” for No Starch Press.
Designed and shipped a sales-pipeline platform (quotes → leads → orders) for a regional lumber dealer, with per-line-item profit and margin calculation as the central differentiator; integrated Shopify GraphQL for product catalog data. Stack: Next.js + TypeScript, FastAPI + async SQLAlchemy, PostgreSQL, Docker on Railway.
Shipped from blank slate to production in three weeks as sole architect, PM, and engineer using an AI-augmented delivery model (Claude Code with spec-driven planning and GitHub-issue-tracked execution) to deliver customer/internal PDF exports, an auto-advancing leads pipeline, and a 46-test pytest suite.
Padgett Risk Consulting (2025 - Present)
Built and stabilized a safety training SaaS platform supporting compliance-driven workflows (e.g., forklift certification), where client companies upload training materials, documents, and quizzes for their employees. Stack: Fastify (Node.js), Vue + TypeScript, Prisma + PostgreSQL.
Stepped in after the prior offshore engineer was replaced, stabilizing the codebase and standing up CI/CD with GitHub Actions building Docker images on merge-to-main, pushing to AWS ECR with a deployment watcher promoting new builds on passing health checks. Maintained delivery velocity at single-engineer cadence through AI-assisted development.
Sam’s Club / Walmart Labs (2019 - 2026)
Served as Platform Engineer on the GraphQL and legacy REST orchestration layer powering Sam’s Club mobile apps and web; owned schema design, federation patterns, and downstream integration across vendor and internal services.
Designed and implemented fine-grained OAuth authorization using scoped tokens and JWKS rotation.
Modernized curb-side pickup real-time pipelines (TypeScript stack) by migrating order ingestion and notifications from Kafka to Azure Event Hubs and implementing Liquibase for automated DB change management, reducing engineering and infrastructure overhead while improving reliability at growing order volumes.
Led development of consumer privacy solutions aligned with CCPA, GDPR, and MHMD regulations, mitigating regulatory risk and improving data protection governance across the platform.
Sam’s Club / Walmart Labs (2015)
Led the Node.js team rebuilding the Sam’s Club mobile site; architected a Hapi API aggregation layer with server-side caching that sustained 4.3M page views/hour during the VIP Sale, and partnered on UI initiatives that drove a 4x conversion lift (0.02% → 0.08%) over the year.
Hilton Worldwide (2018 - 2019)
Modernized group booking and rate management by replacing a legacy Java workflow platform with Node.js GraphQL mutations, composing rate plans (room costs, types, taxes, fees, length of stay) and email flows in a single mutation pipeline.
Opt Health (2022 - 2023)
Led full-stack development of the “Longevity” program, a personalized digital health initiative integrating third-party DNA sample processing to analyze biomarkers (including telomere length) and surface biological vs. chronological age insights to patients via React web and mobile clients backed by Node.js/Express services.
Partnered with clinical stakeholders to translate complex healthcare requirements into scalable telehealth features, building secure data flows across React front-ends, Node.js/Express APIs, and Heroku-based infrastructure in a hypergrowth startup environment.
Notable Client Partnerships
Pearlman Group (2024 - 2025)
Amphora (2017 - 2018)
ZCo Acquisitions (2015 - 2017)
No Starch Press, Thinkful, Creative Circus, Fantasy Coach, FastAF
Professional Experience
The Weather Channel — Senior Web Application Developer (2010 - 2011)
Built a high-traffic interactive SVG Tweet Map using Raphael.js to surface real-time Twitter content on weather.com home and back pages; the Twitter integration was projected to generate $8-10M in engagements and ad impressions.
Developed the UI for an interactive, real-time weather map, complete with weather layers.
Harnessed geolocation, touch, and RWD technologies on the “Mobile Web 4” redesign project.
Onboarded and mentored front-end developers; led the adoption of jQuery for the new site redesign through presentations and prototype demos.
CrowdStrike — Senior Web Application Developer (2012 - 2013)
Built internal malware indexing APIs using Ruby, coupled with AWS SQS for ingestion and processing.
Developed the Threat Detection Dashboard for CrowdStrike Falcon using Node.js and Ember.
AutoTrader.com — User Interface Engineer / Team Lead (2008 - 2010)
Led UI development on several initiatives across consumer site and classics platforms; served as sole engineer on multiple site-wide projects ranging from ads to homepage redesign, impacting ~$1.5M in annual revenue.
Recognized with two internal awards (“I Make a Difference” and “Helping Hands”) for contributions to team and platform.
Architected a lazy-loaded Google Maps component (Backbone/RequireJS) and migrated build pipelines from Rhino/Play to Grunt, reducing compile latency by up to 70% and freeing meaningful developer time across the team.
Engineered a white-label CI/CD system using Jenkins, Git hooks, and HTML validation to streamline multi-tenant deployments.
Endgame Systems — Senior Web Application Developer (2011 - 2012)
Reduced costs by $500K per deployment by replacing Google Earth Enterprise with a custom OpenStreetMap stack (TileMill, TileStache, Leaflet); engineered a custom SVG marker clusterer for high-performance map visualizations.
Built Python data pipelines reading from Solr to power large-dataset visualizations via jQuery Flot charts and DataTables.